Trouble In Tinsel Town
by Redlance-ck
Summary: It's Christmas time in the Mitchell-Beale household. Well. Almost.


Chloe loves Christmas. She really, really, **really** loves Christmas. And even saying that is still, somehow, an understatement.

Chloe enjoys most holidays. They give her an excuse to dress up, decorate the house, and host get-togethers for family and friends.

She loves Easter because she gets to dress as a bunny and hide eggs for her nieces and nephew.

She loves Saint Patrick's Day because she gets to drink bright green alcoholic beverages and wear leprechaun hats and shout words like shillelagh and various other phrases in an awful but adorable Irish accent.

She loves Valentine's Day because that's their first-date-iversary and every year Beca makes reservations for them at the same restaurant they went to that night

(She also loves what happens **after** they're done at La Casa Bella, but she always loves that.)

She loves Independence Day and Thanksgiving, and Halloween is probably her second favourite out of all of them.

But Christmas? Christmas is where Chloe's love-crazy really shines.

November first, the Halloween decorations come down, having been up since the beginning of October, and Chloe goes to work decking the halls of their home.

People like to argue that two whole months of Christmas is way too much. Chloe likes to call those people miserable grinches and Beca usually has to pull her away from the conversation before Chloe does something she'll regret with one of the ten poinsettias dotted around the house.

Beca doesn't have a single negative thing to say about any of it. How could she when she sees how happy it makes Chloe? How could she possibly have a problem with walking in to the sound of Chloe singing along to one of the many Christmas songs on her seasonal playlist?

Short answer: she can't.

The long answer involves a ton of mushy stuff and, as much as Beca means and feels every ounce of it, she likes to think she still has a reputation to uphold.

(She doesn't.)

They spend the night of November second bringing boxes of tinsel and fake mistletoe and tree decorations down from the attic.

"You know," Beca says, standing over the hatch as she lowers a box down to Chloe. "This was so much more annoying when I didn't have super powers."

Chloe laughs, letting the box land against the hardwood floor and waiting for Beca to release the string of webbing she'd used to lower it before picking it up.

"Scurried around in attics a lot as a kid, huh?" Chloe turns to descend the stairs and Beca follows, crawling out of the hatch and along the ceiling above her.

"I did, actually," Beca says, matter-of-fact, and Chloe glances up at her with a smile. "I used to help my dad get everything down when I was a kid. Trying to get boxes through a tiny hatch and hoping the person below doesn't drop them? An awkward and terrifying experience."

Chloe laughs again and shakes her head, not even flinching when she reaches the bottom step and Beca drops down right in front of her without warning.

"Also, now I can like, web any moths that try to attack me instead of screaming and flailing. " She flashes Chloe a winning grin and the redhead purses her lips before sidestepping Beca and heading into the living room.

"You **still** scream," Chloe teases over her shoulder and Beca gasps, affronted.

"All those times, you heard me and did **nothing**?" Beca feigns mock-outrage as Chloe places the box with the rest of the growing pile and then turns to face her.

Beca curls her third and fourth finger back towards her palm to depress the pressure pad that's connected to her web shooters and sends out a line of webbing with an audible _**thwip!**_ Then she twists her hand around to grab hold right as the opposite end fans out and sticks to Chloe's belt buckle.

"My aim is outstanding," Beca announces, not a hint of modesty in her voice, and Chloe gives a chiding click of her tongue but doesn't resist when Beca uses the line to pull her in. "Right on target." Each word is echoed by a further step from Chloe, until she's close enough for Beca to punctuate the sentence with a kiss.

Chloe giggles against her lips, wrapping her arms around Beca's neck, and they spend a few moments trading kisses back and forth like lovestruck teenagers saying goodnight in a darkened doorway.

Which, to be fair, they actually had been not **that** many years ago.

"Hey." Chloe pulls back abruptly, causing Beca to blink a few times in order to get her feet back on the ground. "You're still picking up the tree tomorrow, right?"

"Yep. I'll grab it on my way home from work," Beca assures her, begrudgingly letting Chloe go. "I can't believe there's a lot open already."

"Festive Frank opens early every year, Beca," Chloe reminds her and Beca nods in silent recognition. Chloe's been going to Frank's since she was a kid. "Sure you don't need help?" she asks, heading for the stairs again.

Beca follows in her wake, but nonchalantly walks up to the wall that brackets one side of the staircase and carries on walking until she hits ceiling. Then she hops over, grabs the inside lip of the attic hatch, and twists her body to swing it up and through feet-first.

"Show off," Chloe grins at her when she pokes her head through the opening, dark hair falling in haphazard waves around her face. Beca shrugs.

"Nah. I've got Jesse's truck. I'll even pretend I'm tiny and weak and let one of the guys help me load it." Long gone are the days when Beca would forget where she was and accidentally rip the door off her locker. She's gotten much better at hiding in plain sight.

(Though sometimes she risks it to take Chloe out into the trees behind their house and construct a hammock out of webbing high among the branches, where they'll lie together, swinging softly and staring at the stars.)

"Okay," Chloe chuckles, "just don't forget. I want to get it up and ready for when my mom gets here."

Chloe just so happens to get her love of holidays from her mother and with said matriarch set to spend a few days with them, Chloe is extra excited to decorate the house.

"I won't forget," Beca says with a huff. "Jeeze. Have a little faith."

* * *

She totally forgets.

Like really, **really** forgets, but she'll swear up and down to anyone who asks - not that anyone will - that it wasn't her fault this time.

She'd had to duck out of work early, feigning sickness, in order to intervene in a high speed car chase that the police had lost control over. The man they were pursuing had decided that people's back yards were shortcuts and didn't seem to be taking into consideration the fact that people might be, you know, hanging out back there. The overhead footage being shot from a helicopter told her that he'd already clipped one person and Beca was going to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else.

She wore the suit under her regular clothes most days, unless she was wearing white, in which case you could kinda see the purple through it. She always kept her hoodie in her bag, though, and she'd slipped into a nearby alley to shrug out of her street clothes and trade them in for the sleeveless sweater. After snapping on her web shooters and checking the fluid canisters, she shoved everything she didn't need into her bag, then sprinted up the side of the wall and tossed it high into a corner of the building opposite. Sending three web-balls out after it to make sure it stuck in place, Beca had then turned on her heel and taken off running across the rooftop. At the edge, she'd pressed her feet into the brick and leapt, throwing herself out as far as she could.

With a flick of her wrist, she was swinging across the city, taking a shortcut through the park and yelling an apology to a picnicking couple she'd scared the life out of by bursting through the trees over their heads.

She'd followed the sound of sirens until she'd had eyes on the little white beater of a car. It was back on the road now, out of people's backyards. Then it was three more arcing swings through the air and one perfectly executed twisting somersault that landed her squarely on the roof of the car.

The thump and subsequent indenting of the roof seemed to surprise the driver and she'd felt the car slow down.

Moving quickly, Beca had leaned over the driver's side until she could see in through the window, then knocked on the glass. The man driving had snapped his eye towards her, eyes wild, and Beca had motioned with her hand. Twisting her wrist round and round, silently requesting that he lower the window.

He did not.

So then Beca had pointed through the car, jerking her index finger back and forward a few times, motioning for him to pull over.

He did not.

With a sigh, Beca had wrenched her arm back and then thrust it forward, punching right through the window and sending shards of glass flying. The driver had screamed, his terror momentarily distracting him long enough for Beca to reach in and grab hold of the steering wheel. She'd glanced ahead at the road to see if there was any oncoming traffic - there wasn't, thankfully - and then turned the wheel to take them off the road and into one of those pay-per-hour parking lots that was nearly empty.

"You can either take your foot off the gas," Beca warned, doing her best to steer the car clear of anything it might damage, "or I can take your foot off your leg. Your choice, dude."

Thankfully, he hadn't called her bluff and chose to immediately hit the brakes. She definitely hadn't been ready to follow up on her threat.

Of course, then he'd tried to escape out through the passenger side door and made it an impressive five paces from the car before Beca snagged him with a web. By the time the cop cars screeched into the lot, she was done binding his wrists and ankles and was waiting for them. Casually sitting on the roof of the car with her legs dangling over the side, while the perpetrator lay in the dirt and emitted muffled shouts that were hindered by the gob of webbing she'd put there to shut him up.

"He's all yours, boys." She'd hopped down off the car and approached the nearest officer. He'd smiled at her and thanked her, and Beca had taken a moment to marvel at how far people had come in accepting that she wasn't the Masked Menace that The Daily Pitch had made her out to be. Though editor in chief Aubrey Posen still had it in for her most days.

"Thanks, Spidey. Hey, do you think we could get a photo for the precinct?"

She doesn't pose for just anyone, honestly, but they'd all looked hopefully at her and really, she liked to help the local law enforcement in any way she could.

After that, she'd headed back across the city to retrieve her bag, but then there was an attempted armed robbery, an almost car crash, and a snatch-and-run mugging. By the time she was done, she could barely remember where she'd left her bag, let alone anything else.

Ironically, she's swooping over a church on the east side of town on her way home when she remembers. She's in-between swings when it hits her and she almost misses her web.

"Oh, shit. Shit, shit, **shit**." She throws her legs out, curving the swing around to point her back the way she'd come. She takes the time to land on the church roof, dropping her bag and pulling out her cellphone. There's a missed call from Chloe and a voice mail, but Beca fires off a text rather than calling her back.

 **Sorry, running late. Be home soon. xx**

Securing the bag onto her back with both straps this time, Beca jumps, throwing out a line and head back across town.

By the time she reaches Frank's, he's shutting down for the night. The lights are off and he's locking the gates, and Beca feels the cold chill of something not unlike her spider-sense trickle along the back of her neck.

Danger. Dread. The certainty that Chloe is going to give her what for if she goes home without a tree.

 _This is going to be ridiculous._

She jumps down from where she's perched on the roof of Pete's Pizza and lands solidly, crouched, a few feet behind Frank. The older man jumps at the sound and frantically spins to face her. His eyes are wide and he's wearing a shocked, almost frightened expression.

Beca straightens into a standing position and holds her hands out like she's attempting to steady a spooked horse.

"Whoa. Hey. Hi." The words tumble out in a rush. "Don't freak out. It's me. Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-"

"I know who you are!" Frank bellows in a thick, Italian accent. He's wearing a puffy black winter jacket and one of those hats with ear flaps. Beca isn't sure how he's not sweating. "You scare the crap out of me!" He waves his hands at her, obviously flustered.

"Right. Yeah. Sorry about that. People are always telling me I should wear a bell, maybe I should-"

"Closed!" He interrupts, shaking his head at her and entering a small little shack that's big enough for a chair, a tiny, round table, and what looks like an old, manual cash register.

"What?" Beca is dumbfounded for a moment and she follows the man, hanging back by the doorway. Not that there's enough room for even her to sneak in.

"I am closed." He emphasizes every word, speaking them loudly and as clearly as possible for her. "Lights off, gate locked, Frank done, **closed**." He goes about emptying the cash register, which is, unsurprisingly, not exactly busting at the brim.

"Okay, yeah. I see that. But I was hoping you could maybe do me a favour?" Beca's forced to back up as Frank pockets his earnings and exits the shack.

"A favour? For what?" He snakes his finger below the collar of his jacket and pulls a makeshift necklace over his head. It's a thin piece of rope, or maybe a thick length of yarn, and a key dangles from it. He slips it into the lock on the shack's door and the metals grate against one another as he twists. "What have you done for me lately?" He turns to survey her, slipping the necklace back on, and Beca gapes at him, an action that is thankfully hidden by her mask.

"Man, Chloe never said anything about you being a grouch," she mutters to herself, idly tipping her head and scratching the crown. "What if I, like, owe you one?" she hedges, uncertain. Frank blinks big green eyes at her.

"You do favour for me?" He at least sounds mildly interested and Beca is so desperate at this point that she'd give serious thought to going **carol singing** with the man if he'd just let her buy a damn tree.

"I- sure. Yeah. Whatever you want." Because what could he possibly want from her?

"You come to my daughter's birthday!" He exclaims, his face transforming from grumpy old man to, well, the opposite. He's all excited smiles at the mention of his daughter.

"Oh." Beca hadn't been expecting that. At all. It's not like she has a problem with kids or anything. "I'm just not really, like… a party clown, you know?" Frank's face falls.

"No favour, no tree." He makes to turn away from her but Beca follows, throwing out her arms in frustration.

"Dude, come on!"

"You're desperate." Frank pauses, turning back to her. "You have thirty seconds to reconsider."

Beca is floored. She had **not** been expecting to pay for a Christmas tree with party favours. She'd brought cash and everything.

"Wait. How do you know I'm desperate?" Her question is met with full-bellied laughter from Frank.

"Is late. You forget tree, rush here, beg-"

"I didn't beg!" Beca interjects, uselessly.

"If you weren't desperate, you would have left." He's wearing a smug smile and Beca can't really argue with that. "You have someone special you don't want to disappoint."

"Okay, first of all," Beca folds her arms across her chest. "Get out of my head." Frank laughs. "And fine, whatever. You're right." Beca sighs then, relaxing her pose and bringing a hand up to rub the top of her masked head. "I'll come to your daughter's birthday."

Frank whoops and hollers, then makes a scooting motion with his hands to usher Beca over to a selection of trees. To be fair, they all look like nice, full specimens, and Beca's forced to admit that maybe there's a good reason Chloe and her family have been coming here for years. Of course, her admission is a silent one.

"I think I'll take this one," Beca says, after a moment of surveying. Frank sighs and shakes his head and points to a different tree. They both look exactly the same to Beca, but she's not about to argue. "Right, of course. How silly of me." Her tone is a little left of sincere and she waits patiently as Frank retrieves some mesh to wrap the tree up with.

When he's done, she grasps it by the trunk and hefts it over her shoulder with ease.

"Fifty dollars." Frank holds his hand out.

" **Fifty**?!" Beca explodes, outraged. "Dude, I said I'd go to your kid's birthday!"

"That was so you could buy tree." He shakes his outstretched hand at her. "Fifty dollars."

Beca rolls her eyes so hard she's surprised her mask doesn't come flying off. She drops the tree back down to the ground and slips her backpack off, then kneels on the cold concrete and rummages around inside for her wallet. She pulls out a twenty, two tens and a five, and sighs.

"I only have forty-five." Frank's brow creasing into a deep, skeptical frown as he looks down at her and Beca pulls her wallet wide open so he can see just how empty it is. Then it's his turn to sigh.

"Fine, fine. Forty-five." Frank concedes with a shrug of his shoulders and Beca slaps the bills into his hand, before tossing her wallet back into her bag, zipping it up, and swinging it over her shoulders again.

"Thank you." And she means it, mostly. She picks up the tree once more and Frank tells her to come back for written directions to his house. "Sure. When's her birthday?"

"December twenty-fifth!" He beams. "She was our Christmas miracle."

Beca stares at him from behind her lenses.

"Dude, Christmas **day**?" There are so very many arguments for her to make, but she's frustrated and tired, and already really late getting home. "Look, whatever." Beca spins out a lengthy line of web and ties it around the base of the tree, then winds it up around the tree and loops it around her torso from shoulder to hip, securing it against her back. It squishes up against her bag but that's fine. "I'll swing by when I can." She doesn't waste time with paltry goodbyes and neither does Frank.

She casts out a line of webbing from each arm and waits until they're firmly stuck to the top of the building she'd dropped down from. Then she takes a few steps backwards, until the lines are shakingly taught in her hands, then she jumps. She launches forwards and up, out of the tree lot and away from the man who she is going to have a serious talk about with Chloe the second she gets home.

* * *

Only, the universe doesn't seem to **want** her to get home. Not at a reasonable hour - though she's long past that - and maybe just not at all.

Because the universe has seen fit to throw carjackers and another handful of muggings at her, and now she's dealing with a guy who had been harassing a woman in an alleyway.

 _This is it._ Beca thinks to herself, dodging a blow from the burly man she's fighting. _This is how I spend the rest of my life._ She back flips and catches the guy's chin with her foot, exuding enough force to send him stumbling. _Just an endless drove of idiots._ She grits her teeth behind her mask, getting angrier by the second, and sidesteps out of the way when the man lunges at her. _I'm never going to see Chloe again. She'll think I ran off under the pretense of getting a tree, like some deadbeat dad who went out for smokes. She_ turns to find the man bent at the waist with his hands on his hips and Beca flips up and over, landing squarely on his back. He grunts

"Hey! What are you trying to say?" She scoffs in disgust and then delivers a well placed punch to the side of his face head, knocking him out. "Rude."

She webs him up in a cocoon and then drags him out onto the brightly lit sidewalk, grumbling to herself as she goes. There are two people walking towards her and they stop short at the sight. Beca looks over at them, dropping the man with thud.

"Hey. Hi." She offers them an awkward wave, which they return in unison. "Do either of you have- wait, what am I saying? Can one of you use your cellphone to call the cops? I'd stay but like… I'm really, really late for something." After they agree - in return for a photograph - Beca quickly scales the building wall to reach the top of the streetlight. Then she shoots down a line, pulling the man up until he's a few feet off the ground, and then she winds the rest of the webbing around the top of the light to hold him in place.

She bids her helpers farewell and swings off to retrieve the tree from where she'd left it on top of a nearby building.

It has seen slightly better days.

It's not Beca's fault, it isn't. With the carjackers, she'd had to literally lob it into the air and web it to one of the cement pillars of the parking garage. So that had lost it a few needles. Then each mugging had caused her to hastily drop the thing, because it's a bit more difficult to maneuver with a tree strapped to your back. Same with this last guy, except he'd looked at the tree with confusion.

"Is that a Christmas tree? It's **November** , man."

"Look, I'm not here to tell you how and when to celebrate holidays, okay? Maybe you could extend me the same courtesy while I kick your ass."

And so, the tree she picks up now is one with a few bare branches and its top snapped almost clean in half. Beca sighs, scratching her head, and swings it back around her body before setting off, once more, for home.

* * *

This time, she actually makes it back with no stops and drops into the shadows at the back of the house. She takes the time to pull off her mask and hoodie, shoving them into her backpack and trading them out for the jacket she'd been wearing at work earlier, just in case. She digs her keys out and snares the ring they're on between her teeth, before swinging the bag over a shoulder and hefting the tree over the other.

The house is quiet, but the lights are on, and Beca starts to hear the quiet, melodic tones of Christmas music the closer she gets to the living room.

"Bec? Is that you?" Chloe's voice reaches her through the archway and she stops, panicked, and rests the battered tree against the wall.

"Uh, yeah. Yep. Hi." _You had_ _ **one**_ _job, Mitchell._ Beca spools some webbing into her hand and rolls it into a ball. She holds the tip of the broken top branch and gingerly presses the webbing into the gap where it split, then straightens the branch.

"You're late." Chloe sounds more worried than anything. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, totally. Did you get my text?" The branch seems to be holding for now, but there isn't much Beca can do about the rest of it.

"Yeah, you just didn't say why. And why are you lurking in the hallway?" Chloe asks and, when Beca hears movement, she just reacts.

She lets loose with as many webs as she can in the time it takes Chloe to reach the archway and, to be fair, it kind of makes the tree look like it's covered in snow flakes. Stringy, webby snowflakes.

Beca counts to three before risking a glance towards the blur of red in her periphery, mostly because she can't tell if that's just Chloe's hair she's seeing or if her girlfriend is so mad that her face has actually turned the same shade as it.

"I can explain-" Beca starts, finally twisting her head to look at Chloe. Chloe, who takes one look at the tree and glares at Beca.

"You forgot." It's definitely an accusation, there isn't even a hint of a question in there, and Chloe's crossed arms speak volumes all on their own. Beca holds up a still-gloved hand, her index finger pointing towards the ceiling while the rest curl into a fist, like she's about to argue.

"It wasn't my fault," is what comes out. Pleading and also a little bit whiny. Chloe rolls her eyes. "No, really this time!" Chloe ignores her and heads back into the living room, and Beca starts to follow before stopping short and grabbing the tree. "Please don't be mad." She drags it into the room with her and leans it up against the fireplace.

"I'm not mad," Chloe sighs, dropping down onto the sofa and glancing wordlessly up at Beca, who cringes at the look.

"You're just disappointed," she finishes the sentence for her girlfriend. "Okay, just, let me explain." Silence follows and it's only after Chloe blinks half a dozen times that Beca realises she's being given the go ahead. "Oh, okay, yeah. Well, everything kind of went to crap when I had to duck out of work early to help stop a police chase."

It takes a few minutes, but by the time Beca has regaled Chloe with the events of her evening, Chloe is looking a little more sympathetic.

"Sounds like you had a rough night," Chloe admits, standing and crossing the distance between them to pull Beca into a hug. Beca sags into the contact, relieved.

"I did. Really, the tree isn't the only victim here." She can practically feel Chloe looking at the tree proped up behind them. It's needle-free branches sticking out from between cobwebs like sad, gnarly fingers. "Oh, one more thing? You didn't tell me Frank was mean." Chloe pulls back to look at her, frowning in confusion. "Frank's **mean** , Chloe." Beca settles her mouth into a pout and Chloe laughs.

"Frank isn't mean! He's one of the nicest guy's I've ever met." She untangles herself from Beca and then moves around her to approach the tree. Beca turns her body to follow.

"He was rude, and mean, and tried to **extort** me!" Beca insists, but Chloe just shakes her head. Beca watches as she lifts a hand to fiddle with a branch near the top of the tree and winces when the one that should be sporting a tree-topper sags sideways. Chloe's hand hovers in the air for a moment, her eyes sliding to Beca.

"We'll go get a new one first thing tomorrow, deal?" Beca takes off her gloves and runs her fingers through her hair with a rueful smile. Chloe smirks, but nods, and Beca thinks she might just avoid sleeping in the proverbial dog house tonight.

(Not that she's ever spent a night there. Chloe **needs** to cuddle in order to actually be able to sleep.)

"Oh, and I'm going to have to step out first thing Christmas morning." Beca bites her teeth together as she smiles. "No reason." Thankfully, Chloe doesn't question her.

"So, you swung all the way home with this?" Chloe's inquiry sounds innocent enough, but her lips are still curved into a smirk.

"Yes." Beca drawls, drawing the word out as she narrows her eyes. Chloe walks back over to her and takes Beca's face between her hands, planting a quick kiss on her lips. Then she just smiles at her.

"You're going to be so mad when you remember you borrowed Jesse's truck for this."

Beca stares at her.

"Oh, son of a bitch."

Chloe laughs and breaks away, turning up the music before returning to pull Beca out of her jacket and into a dance.

Chloe really loves Christmas.

Beca's just lucky Chloe happens to love **her** just a little bit more.


End file.
